Graduate students in physics at Baylor University experience the benefits of a major American university, large enough to support a superior academic program while still allowing opportunities only available within a close-knit community of scholars. A campus population of over 17,000, with a graduate student population of almost 11%, allows Baylor graduate students to enjoy close working relationships with their major professors.

Graduate students are involved at every level of the research process and have almost unlimited access to their major professor. In addition, they participate in a variety of teaching activities, thereby enhancing their opportunities for later employment at the university level.

The Physics Department offers the Doctor of Philosophy degree and both thesis and non-thesis Master's of Science and Master's of Arts degrees. Current enrollment for advanced degrees is approximately 40 students from all over the world (including Sri Lanka, China, India, and Nepal). Experimental research within the department focuses on atomic, molecular, nuclear, elementary particle, plasma, surface and space physics. Various theoretical groups are researching astrophysics, cosmology, gravity, high energy particle physics, nuclear, quantum-optical, solid-state and space physics.

Rankings of Physics Departments as Determined by GraduatePrograms.com:

Graduate Programs is pleased to announce its Spring 2015 Physics Grad Rankings according to students, enumerating the best graduate programs in the country based solely on ratings and reviews from current or recent graduate students posted on graduateprograms.com.

Program rankings, compiled using data gathered between September 1, 2012 and March 31, 2015, encompass reviews posted by more than 70,000 students participating in over 1,600 graduate programs nationwide. Ratings are based on a 10 star system (with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best).

The Top 25 Physics Grad Programs are listed below:
1 Rice University
2 The University of Tennessee Knoxville
3 Syracuse University
4 Duke University
5 Cornell University
6 College of William & Mary
7 Kansas State University
8 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
9 University of California-Santa Barbara
10 North Carolina State University
11 Boston College
12 University of Pennsylvania
13 Brown University
14 Yale University
15 The University of Alabama
16 The University of Chicago
17 Temple University
18 Penn State University Park
19 University of Rochester
20 University of California Davis
21 University of California-Berkeley
22 Boston University
23 University of Minnesota Twin Cities24 Baylor University
25 Georgia Institute of Technology

METHODOLOGY

Graduateprograms.com reaches current and recent graduate students through scholarship entries as well as social media platforms.

Graduateprograms.com assigns 15 ranking categories to each graduate program at each graduate school. Rankings cover a variety of student topics such as academic competitiveness, career support, financial aid and quality of network.

For a given graduate program, rankings are determined by calculating the average score for each program based on the 15 ranking categories. These scores are then compared across all ranked schools for that program and are translated into a final ranking for that graduate program. A given graduate program is not ranked until a minimum threshold of graduate student surveys is completed for that program.